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Fertilizing The Ocean | Earth Wise

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There are a variety of schemes for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Some require advanced and generally not-very-well developed technology.  Others, such as planting vast numbers of trees, are nature-based but are daunting with respect to the scale to which they need to take place in order to be truly effective.

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington have been examining the scientific evidence for seeding the oceans with iron-rich engineered fertilizer in order to feed phytoplankton.  Phytoplankton are microscopic plants that are a key part of the ocean ecosystem.

Phytoplankton take up carbon dioxide as they grow.  In nature, nutrients from the land end up in the ocean through rivers and from blowing dust.  These nutrients fertilize the plankton.  The idea is to augment these existing processes to increase the growth of phytoplankton.  As they eventually die, they sink deep into the ocean, taking the excess carbon with them.


The researchers argue that engineered nanoparticles could provide highly controlled nutrition that is specifically tuned for different ocean environments.  Surface coatings could help the particles attach to plankton.  Some could be engineered with light-absorbing properties, allowing plankton to consume and use more carbon dioxide.

Analysis of over 100 published studies showed that numerous non-toxic, abundant, and easy-to-create metal-oxygen materials could safely enhance plankton growth.  According to the researchers, the proposed fertilization would simply speed up a natural process that already sequesters carbon in a form that could remove it from the atmosphere for thousands of years.  They argue that given the current trends in the climate, time is of the essence for taking action.

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Fertilizing the Ocean to Store Carbon Dioxide

Photo, posted August 2, 2007, courtesy of Kevin McCarthy via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Windows To Cool Buildings | Earth Wise

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About 15% of global energy consumption is for cooling buildings.  Because of this, there is an ever- growing need for technologies that can more efficiently cool buildings.   Researchers at Notre Dame University have used advanced computing technology and artificial intelligence to design a transparent window coating that is able to lower the temperature inside buildings without using any energy.

The idea is to create a coating that blocks the sun’s ultraviolet and near-infrared light, which are parts of the solar spectrum that otherwise pass through glass and help to heat an enclosed room.  Cooling needs can be reduced further if the coating can radiate heat from the surface of the window so it can pass through the atmosphere into space.  Designing a coating that does both of those things simultaneously while transmitting visible light is difficult.  Coatings should not interfere with the view out the window.

The Notre Dame researchers used advanced computer modeling to create a so-called transparent radiative cooler that meets these goals.  The coating consists of alternating layers of common materials like silicon dioxide, silicon nitride, and aluminum oxide or titanium dioxide on top of a glass base and topped with a film of polydimethylsiloxane.  The computing method was able to optimize this structure far faster and better than conventional design techniques.

The researchers say that in hot, dry cities, the coating could potentially reduce cooling energy consumption by 31% compared with conventional windows.  The same materials could be used in other applications, such as car and truck windows.  In addition, the quantum computing-enabled optimization method used for this work could be used to design other composite materials.

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Clear window coating could cool buildings without using energy

Photo, posted September 6, 2015, courtesy of Robert Otmn via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Carbon Storage In Harvested Wood | Earth Wise

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Trees are an exceedingly important carbon sink on our planet.  For this reason, deforestation is a major contributor to climate change.  But when trees are harvested for wood products like lumber, much of the carbon in that wood continues to be stored.  Even when a wood product is discarded at the end of its useful life, it can keep storing carbon.

Over 90% of new single-family homes in the U.S. are built with wood.  Each year, about 400,000 homes, apartment buildings, and other housing units are lost to floods and other natural disasters.  Others fall apart from decay or are torn down to be replaced with newer structures.  Given how much carbon is stored in houses, it is important to understand what the future trajectory of residential structures will be.

A new study by the USDA Forest Service published in the journal PLOS ONE looks at the future of harvested wood products in residential structures.  According to the study, wood products in these structures will continue to increase the country’s carbon storage for the next 50 years. 

Even after residential structures reach the end of their useful life and much of the materials end up in landfills (which is typical in this country), the wood products do not immediately release their carbon.  It may take decades for that to happen.

The study looked at various scenarios for future home construction.  Although housing starts are projected to decline in the future, residential housing and the need to maintain existing structures are projected to continue to increase carbon storage in wood products for the next several decades.

The role of trees as a carbon sink does not end when they are harvested for their wood.

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Carbon Storage in Harvested Wood Products

Photo, posted January 27, 2022, courtesy of Luke McKernan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Solar-Powered Desalination | Earth Wise

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About two-thirds of humanity is affected by water shortages.  In the developing world, many areas with water shortages also lack dependable sources of electricity.  Given this situation, there is widespread research on using solar heat to desalinate seawater.  To date, many approaches to this face problems with fouling of equipment with salt buildup.  Tackling this issue has proven to add complexity and expense to solar desalination techniques.

A team of researchers from MIT and China has recently developed a solution to the problem of salt accumulation that is more efficient than previous methods and is less expensive as well.

Previous attempts at solar desalination have relied on some sort of wick to draw saline water through the device.  These wicks are vulnerable to salt accumulation and are difficult to clean.  The MIT-Chinese team has developed a wick-free system instead.  It is a layered system with dark material at the top to absorb the sun’s heat, and then a thin layer of water that sits above a perforated layer of plastic material.  That layer sits atop a deep reservoir of salty water such as a tank or pond.  The researchers determined the optimal size for the holes in the perforated plastic.

The 2.5 millimeter holes are large enough to allow for convective circulation between the warmer upper layer of water above the perforated layer and the colder reservoir below.  That circulation naturally draws the salt from the thin layer above down into the much larger body of water below.

The system utilizes low-cost, easy to use materials.  The next step is to scale up the devices into a size that has practical applications.  According to the team, just a one-square-meter system could provide a family’s daily needs for drinking water.

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Solar-powered system offers a route to inexpensive desalination

Photo, posted February 13, 2017, courtesy of Jacob Vanderheyden via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Capturing Carbon Dioxide With Plastic | Earth Wise

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The world is awash in both waste plastic and in carbon dioxide emissions.   Researchers at Rice University have discovered a chemical technique for making waste plastic into an effective carbon dioxide absorbent for industry.

Chemists at Rice reported in the journal ACS Nano that heating plastic waste in the presence of potassium acetate produces particles with nanometer-scale pores that trap carbon dioxide molecules.   According to the researchers, these particles could be used to remove CO2 from the flue gas streams of power plants.

Significant sources of CO2 emissions like power plant exhaust stacks could be fitted with this waste-plastic-derived material to absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide that would otherwise enter the atmosphere. 

The Rice University process is an enhancement to the current process of pyrolyzing waste plastic – that is, breaking it down in the presence of heat.  By pyrolyzing plastic in the presence of potassium acetate, porous particles are formed that can hold up to 18% of their own weight in carbon dioxide.

According to the researchers, the cost of capturing carbon from a power plant would be $21 a ton, which is far less expensive than existing energy-intensive processes used to pull carbon dioxide from natural gas feeds.

The sorbent material can be reused.  Heating it to about 167 degrees Fahrenheit releases trapped carbon dioxide from the pores and regenerates about 90% of the material’s binding sites.

The Rice process may represent a much better way to capture carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust stacks.  It could be a way to make use of one environmental problem – waste plastic – to deal with another one.

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Treated plastic waste good at grabbing carbon dioxide

Photo, posted April 19, 2021, courtesy of Ivan Radic via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A New “Wonder Material” | Earth Wise

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Graphene is a form of carbon made of single-atom-thick layers. It has many remarkable properties and researchers around the world continue to investigate its use in multiple applications.

In 2019, a new material composed of single-atom-thick layers was produced for the first time.  It is phosphorene nanoribbons or PNRs, which are ribbon-like strands of two-dimensional phosphorous.  These materials are tiny ribbons that can be a single atomic layer thick and less than 100 atoms wide but millions of atoms long.  They are comparable in aspect ratio to the cables that span the Golden Gate Bridge.   Theoretical studies have predicted how PNR properties could benefit all sorts of devices, including batteries, biomedical sensors, thermoelectric devices, nanoelectronics, and quantum computers. 

As an example, nanoribbons have great potential to create faster-charging batteries because they can hold more ions than can be stored in conventional battery materials.

Recently, for the first time, a team of researchers led by Imperial College London and University College London researchers has used PNRs to significantly improve the efficiency of a device.  The device is a new kind of solar cell, and it represents the first demonstration that this new wonder material might actually live up to its hype.

The researchers incorporated PNRs into solar cells made from perovskites.  The resultant devices had an efficiency above 21%, which is comparable to traditional silicon solar cells.  Apart from the measured results, the team was able to experimentally verify the mechanism by which the PNRs enhanced the improved efficiency.

Further studies using PNRs in devices will allow researchers to discover more mechanisms for how they can improve performance.

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‘Wonder material’ phosphorene nanoribbons live up to hype in first demonstration

Photo, posted October 6, 2010, courtesy of Alexander AlUS / CORE-Materials via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Turning Atmospheric Carbon Into Useful Materials | Earth Wise

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Plants have the ability to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and incorporate it into leaves, fruits, wood, and other plant materials.  This beneficial process is mostly temporary, as much of this carbon dioxide from plant matter ends up back in the atmosphere through decomposition, or even burning.

Researchers at the Salk Institute have proposed a more permanent fate for captured carbon by turning plant matter into a valuable industrial material called silicon carbide.

In a recent study published in the journal RSC Advances, Salk scientists transformed tobacco and corn husks into silicon carbide and evaluated and quantified the benefits of the process.

The researchers used a previously reported method to transform plant matter into silicon carbide in three stages and carefully tracked the carbon utilization at each stage.

Stage one is growing the plants.  They used tobacco from seed, chosen for its short growing season.  Then the harvested plants are frozen, ground into a powder, and treated with chemicals including a silicon-containing compound.  Finally, the powder is subjected to a high-temperature process resulting in the production of silicon carbide.

Their analysis showed that much of the carbon sequestered by growing the plants could be preserved through the full process and the amount of energy required for the production of the silicon carbide (mostly from the high-temperature process) is comparable to current manufacturing processes for the material.

Permanently sequestering carbon from agricultural waste products by incorporating it into a valuable industrial material would be a valuable addition to strategies for reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

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Transforming Atmospheric Carbon Into Industrially Useful Materials

Photo, posted August 3, 2013, courtesy of AJ Garrison via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Better Solar Evaporator | Earth Wise

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Water security is a serious global problem.  Nearly 1.5 billion people – including almost half a billion children – live in areas of high or extremely high water vulnerability.  Less than 3% of the world’s water is fresh and demand for it is rising with increasing population growth, urbanization, and growing water needs from a range of sectors.

Researchers at the University of South Australia have developed a promising new technique that could help reduce or eliminate water stress for millions of people.  The technique uses highly efficient solar evaporation to obtain fresh water from seawater, brackish water, or even contaminated water.   According to the researchers, their technique can deliver enough daily fresh drinking water for a family of four from just one square meter of source water.

Solar evaporation has been the focus of a great deal of effort in recent years, but it has generally been found to be too inefficient to be practically useful.  The new technique overcomes those inefficiencies and can deliver fresh water at a fraction of the cost of existing technologies like reverse osmosis.

The system utilizes a highly efficient photothermal structure that sits on the surface of a water source and converts sunlight to heat, focusing energy precisely on the surface to rapidly evaporate the uppermost portion of the liquid.  The technique prevents any loss of solar energy and even draws additional energy from the bulk water and surrounding environment.

The system is built entirely from simple, everyday materials that are low cost, sustainable, and easily obtainable.

The technology has the potential to provide a long-term clean water solution to people who can’t afford other systems, and these are the places where such solutions are most needed.

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Sunlight to solve the world’s clean water crisis

Photo, posted November 13, 2016, courtesy of Steve Austin via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Cleaner Water Using Corn | Earth Wise

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Corn is the largest agricultural crop in the U.S., and it is also one of the most wasteful.  About half of the harvest ends up as stover – corn stalks, leaves, husks, and cobs – once the kernels are used for food.

Corn stover has relatively few commercial or industrial uses.  It can be used to produce biofuel, but that is not very energy efficient.  It is sometimes used as a low-quality livestock feed as well.  Mostly, it is just burned if it is used at all.

Researchers at the University of California Riverside have developed an energy-efficient way to make good use of stover by transforming it into activated carbon for use in water treatment.

Activated carbon – often called activated charcoal – is an organic material that is specially treated to contain millions of microscopic pores that make it highly absorbent.  It has many industrial uses, the most common of which is for filtering pollutants out of drinking water.  Most household water filters such as Brita filters as well as the ones built into refrigerators make use of activated carbon.

The Riverside researchers explored methods for producing activated carbon from charred corn stover and found that processing the material with hot compressed water – a process known as hydrothermal carbonization – produced highly absorbent activated carbon with superior properties compared to material produced by slow pyrolysis, where corn stover is charred at increasing temperatures over a long period of time.

According to the researchers, it is important to create approaches that convert waste into high-value materials, fuels, and chemicals in order to create new value streams and eliminate the environmental harm that comes from a so-called “take-make-dispose” economic model.

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Cleaner Water Through Corn

Photo, posted September 15, 2010, courtesy of the United Soybean Board / the Soybean Checkoff via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Red Hot Chili Solar Panels | Earth Wise

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The majority of solar panels in use today are made from either single-crystal or polycrystalline silicon, the same stuff used to make the ubiquitous chips in computers, cell phones, and countless other devices.  In addition, a growing fraction of solar panels utilize thin-film technology, which offers cost and flexibility advantages.

Monocrystal silicon still provides the highest efficiency and longest lifespan in commercially available panels, but the lower costs and some other features of thin-film solar panels are growing that market over time.

More recently, perovskite solar cell technology has been a source of great interest in the research community.  Perovskites are a class of minerals with a specific crystalline structure that already have uses in various applications.  As a solar cell material, perovskites offer the potential for converting more sunlight to electricity, being manufactured far more cheaply using no exotic or expensive materials, being more defect-tolerant, as well as a having number of other advantages.  They also have the potential for having very high efficiency. 

Recently, a group of researchers in China and Sweden published results of studies demonstrating that the addition of a novel ingredient has increased the efficiency of perovskite solar cells to nearly 22%, which is better than most commercial silicon solar cells.  The ingredient is capsaicin, the chemical that gives chili peppers their spicy sting.  Adding capsaicin expands the grains that make up the active material of the solar cell, allowing the more effective transport of electricity. 

Why did the researchers think of adding the active ingredient of hot peppers to a solar cell in the first place?  So far, they aren’t saying.

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Solar panels capture more sunlight with capsaicin – the chemical that makes chili peppers spicy

Photo, posted August 16, 2019, courtesy of Pedro via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Self-Watering Soil | Earth Wise

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Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have created a new type of soil that can pull water from the air and distribute it to plants.  Such soil has the potential to expand the map of farmable land to previously inhospitable places as well as to reduce water use in agriculture in an era of growing droughts.

The team’s atmospheric water irrigation system makes use of super-moisture-absorbent gels to capture water from the air.  When they are heated to a high enough temperature, the gels release the water, making it available to plants.

The gels in the soil pull water out of the air during cooler, more humid periods at night and when the sun heats the soil during the day, the water-containing gels release their contents into the soil.

Each gram of soil can extract about 3-4 grams of water.  Depending on the specific crop, somewhere between a couple of ounces and 2 pounds of the soil can provide enough water to irrigate a square yard of farmland.

Experiments on the soil found that it retains water better than the sandy soils found in dry areas and needs much less water to grow plants.

In one experiment, radish plants germinated in the soil all survived a 14-day period without any irrigation beyond the initial watering when they were planted.  Radish plants in ordinary sandy soil irrigated for the first four days of the experiments lasted no more than two days further without watering.

The Austin group has been developing gel-polymer materials that work like super-sponges for two years.  These materials extract large amounts of water from the ambient air, clean it, and release it when heated with solar energy.

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Self-Watering Soil Could Transform Farming

Photo, posted October 21, 2020, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture via Flickr. USDA Media by Lance Cheung.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Toughest Beetle Of Them All | Earth Wise

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In 2015, UC Riverside materials scientists placed a mottled black beetle in a parking lot and ran it over with a Toyota Camry.  Twice.  Crushed beneath the wheels of a 3,500-pound sedan, the inch-long insect made it through without a scratch.

For the past five years, a group of scientists have been studying this remarkable bug, which has the splendid name of the diabolical ironclad beetle. Using a combination of advanced microscopy, mechanical testing, and computer simulations, the researchers have figured out the secret of this beetle’s crush resistance.

The beetle’s super-toughness lies in two armorlike structures called elytra that meet in a line, called a suture, running the length of the abdomen.  The suture acts like a jigsaw puzzle.  It connects various exoskeletal blades – the puzzle pieces – in the abdomen under the elytra.   These structural components can act in different ways.  The interconnecting blades lock to prevent themselves from pulling out of the suture.  The suture and blades delaminate, leading to a graceful deformation rather than catastrophic failure.  These strategies dissipate energy to circumvent fracturing.

The researchers found that the diabolical ironclad beetle – just had to say that name again – can take on an applied force of about 150 newtons, a load at least 39,000 times its body weight.  (That’s the equivalent of a 150-pound person resisting the crush of about 25 blue whales).

An ongoing challenge for structural engineering is how to join together different materials without limiting their ability to support loads.  The strategies evolved in these beetles may be applicable in gas turbines of aircraft, for example, where metals and composite materials are joined together with mechanical fasteners.   We can learn things from the toughest beetle of them all.

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Diabolical ironclad beetles inspire tougher joints for engineering applications

Photo, posted April 9, 2017, courtesy of Vahe Martirosyan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Recycling Solar Panels | Earth Wise

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It is inevitable that the things we make and use eventually outlive their useful lives and become waste that we have to deal with.  Solar panels, despite their impressively long lifetime, can’t escape this general principle.   As pioneering solar panels near the end of their 30-year electronic lives, they could well become the world’s next big wave of e-waste.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, nearly 90 million tons of solar panels will have reached their end of life by the year 2050, resulting in about 7 million tons of new solar e-waste per year.

Solar photovoltaic deployment has grown at unprecedented rates in recent years.  The total global installed capacity is about 600 GW today; projections are that there will be 1,600 GW by 2030 and 4,500 GW by 2050.

Solar panels contain valuable materials, including silver and high-purity silicon.  But current recycling procedures are not cost-effective.   Only about 10% of panels are currently recycled in the U.S.   The rest go to landfills or are shipped overseas to become another country’s problem.

Before solar waste becomes a major problem, the industry needs to better address the issue.  Strategies include improving the design of panels to align with recycling capabilities as well as developing new recycling methods that can more efficiently extract and purify the valuable materials in the panels.  Industry researchers are also looking into ways to repair and resell panels that are still in good condition and to repurpose old panels for less demanding functions like e-bike charging stations and housing complexes.

Like most things, solar panels do fail over time and with a rapidly growing number of them in the world, we need to figure out how to avoid them adding to the world’s problems.

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Solar Panels Are Starting to Die. Will We be Able to Recycle the E-Waste?

Photo, posted January 6, 2006, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Recycling Tough Plastics | Earth Wise

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Thermoset plastics are ones that contain polymers that cross-link together during the curing process to form an irreversible chemical bond.  This improves the material’s mechanical properties, provides chemical resistance, heat resistance, and structural integrity.  Thermosets include epoxies, polyurethanes, and rubber used for tires.  The big problem with thermosets is that they cannot be easily recycled or broken down after use.

Seventy-five percent of all plastics are thermoplastics, which can be recycled by heating them until they become liquid and can then be remolded.   Thermoset plastics, on the other hand, have such strong chemical bonds that they simply will not melt.  They will typically burn before they can be remolded.

Chemists at MIT have recently developed a way to modify thermoset plastics with a chemical linker that makes them much easier to break down, but still retain the mechanical properties that make them so useful.

In a study published in Nature, the researchers produced a degradable version of a thermoset plastic called pDCPD.  They then broke the plastic down into a powder and were able to use the powder to create more pDCPD.  The paper also proposed a theoretical model that suggests that their approach could be used for a wide range of other plastics and polymers, including rubber.

By adding a chemical called a silyl ether monomer to the liquid precursors that from pDCPD plastic, they found that the resultant material retained its mechanical strength but can be broken down into a soluble powder upon exposure to fluoride ions.

Using this approach with other thermoset materials, the researchers believe it will be possible to create recyclable versions of many of the toughest plastic materials.

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Chemists make tough plastics recyclable

Photo, posted September 1, 2019, courtesy of Luke McKernan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A High-Tech Fire Alarm | Earth Wise

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In recent years, wildfires have been a global problem, notably in California, Brazil, and Australia.  It has become increasingly important to be able to respond to new fires as soon and as quickly as possible.  Such response can make the task of extinguishing them easier, thereby reducing the amount of damage and the loss of property and life.

Traditional methods for detecting forest fires include satellite monitoring, ground patrols, and watch towers, all of which have high labor and financial costs but suffer from low efficiency.  Remote sensing technologies are becoming increasingly common but rely on batteries for power, requiring servicing in remote locations to replace depleted batteries.  Solar cells represent an alternative to batteries, but it is challenging to use them in forests because of shading and foliage coverage.

A team of researchers at Michigan State University has developed a remote forest fire detection and alarm system powered by nothing more than the movement of tree limbs in the wind.  The device is known as an MC-TENG, which is an acronym for multilayered cylindrical triboelectric nanogenerator.  The triboelectric effect is a phenomenon where certain materials become electrically charged when they separate from a second material with which they were previously in contact.  In the new device, two cylindrical sleeves fit within one another – one anchored and the other free to slide.  The device is tied to a tree branch and when the branch sporadically moves in the wind, electricity is generated and stored in a carbon-nanotube-based micro supercapacitor.  This powers a sensing system that can continuously monitor environmental conditions without requiring any maintenance.

A combination of carbon monoxide and temperature sensors provides a high-tech fire alarm that can operate continuously in the most remote forest.

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Self-Powered Alarm Fights Forest Fires, Monitors Environment

Photo, posted August 3, 2012, courtesy of Lukas Schlagenhauf via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Concrete Production And Diminishing Coal Burning | Earth Wise

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Coal burning is still one of the primary means of generating electricity in the United States, but its use is diminishing and doing so fairly rapidly.  The coal burning process produces residual, incombustible materials.  One of them is fly ash, which is composed of fine, glassy, rounded particles rich in silicon, aluminum, calcium, and iron oxides.  Fly ash is captured from coal plant flue gas by precipitators and bag filters. It turns out that two-thirds of this fly ash is not dumped into landfills or impoundments, but rather is put to use.

Because of its chemical and physical characteristics, fly ash can substitute for a portion of portland cement in concrete.  Using this byproduct material in making cement actually reduces its cost. Beyond cost, the addition of fly ash as a so-called supplementary cementitious material or SCM improves concrete’s long-term strength and reduces porosity and permeability.  It reduces the risk of thermal cracking and provides good long-term mechanical properties.

The amount of fly ash used in concrete products increased by 5% between 2011 and 2017 while the amount produced dropped by 36%.  Concrete production continues to increase steadily while fly ash production is steadily dropping.

Therefore, the concrete industry is looking for alternative sources of SCM.  The most obvious is the approximately 1/3 of fly ash that hasn’t been used to make concrete.  Much of that is landfilled or ponded onsite at power plants.  So, opportunities exist for excavating or dredging and recovering these materials.

As coal burning goes away, concrete manufacturing needs to make some changes.

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What Does the Changing Face of Electricity Production Mean for Concrete?

Photo, posted February 16, 2017, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Safer Disposal Of Printed Circuit Boards | Earth Wise

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Printed circuit boards are key elements of modern electronic devices that support and connect all of their electronic components.  On average, they are composed of 30% metallic and 70% nonmetallic substances.

Once the circuit boards have served their purpose, they are often burned or buried in landfills, and can pollute the air, soil, and water.  The biggest problem is that they have brominated flame retardants added to them in order to keep them from catching fire.  Compounds in brominated flame retardants have been linked to endocrine disorders and fetal tissue damage.

Many circuit boards are recycled to recover valuable materials – generally the metals they contain.  But recycling has its own problems.  Metallic components can be recovered from crushed circuit boards by magnetic and high-voltage electrostatic separations.  When the metals are removed, what remains are resins, reinforcing materials, brominated flame retardants, and other additives, which are of little value and present various dangers.

Researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in China have developed a ball-milling method to break down these potentially harmful compounds, enabling safe disposal.  A ball mill is a rotating machine that uses small agate balls to grind up materials. The researchers also added iron powder, which helps remove bromine from organic compounds by breaking the carbon-bromine bonds in the flame retardants.  The result was particles with half of their bromine content removed as well as decomposition of phenolic resin compounds.

The ever-increasing proliferation of device technology had led to a new set of pollution and waste challenges facing society.  Research on ways to reduce the impact of high-tech garbage is an important need for society.

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Toward safer disposal of printed circuit boards

Photo, posted February 18, 2018, courtesy of Diego Torres Silvestre via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Conspicuous Consumption

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Human civilization consumes vast amounts of material.   The Circle Economy think tank actually puts some numbers on it.  According to their latest report, the amount of material consumed by humanity has passed 100 billion tons every year.  So, on average, every person on Earth uses more than 13 tons of materials per year.

That number has quadrupled since 1970, which is far faster than the population, which has only doubled during that time.  In the past two years alone, consumption has jumped by more than 8%.  While this has been going on, the proportion being recycled has been falling.

Of the 100 billion tons of materials, half of the total is sand, clay, gravel, and cement used for building, along with other minerals used for fertilizer.  Coal, oil and gas make up 15% and metal ores 10%. The final quarter are plants and trees used for food and fuel.  About 40% of all materials are turned into housing.  A third of the annual materials consumed remain in use, such as in buildings or vehicles.  But 15% is emitted into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases and a third is treated as waste.

The global emergencies of climate change and disappearing wildlife have been driven by the unsustainable extraction of fossil fuels, metals, building materials, and trees.  The authors of the report warn that if we continue to treat the world’s resources as limitless, we are heading for a global disaster.

The Circle Economy think tank promotes the idea of a circular economy in which renewable energy supports systems where waste and pollution are reduced to zero.  Some nations are taking steps towards circular economies, while others are not.  This is a problem we can’t allow to be unaddressed.

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World Consumes 100 Billion Tons of Materials Every Year, Report Finds

Photo, posted March 13, 2015, courtesy of Joyce Cory via Flickr.

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Turning Trash Into Treasure

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Every year, 380 million tons of plastic are created worldwide, and that number continues to grow.  Furthermore, more than 75% of these materials are discarded after one use.  Much of it ends up in oceans and waterways, harming wildlife and spreading toxins.

Recycling most plastics is difficult because while they can be melted and reprocessed, the resultant material is not as structurally strong as the original material.  Thus, plastics are often down-cycled such as turning plastic bottles into molded park benches.

Researchers at Northwestern University, Argonne National Laboratory, and Ames Laboratory have developed a new method for upcycling abundant, seemingly low-value plastics into high-quality liquid products, such as motor oils, lubricants, detergents, and even cosmetics.  The catalytic method  could remove plastic pollution from the environment and contribute to a circular economy.

Plastics don’t degrade when disposed of because they have very strong carbon-carbon bonds.  Instead they just break into smaller bits, known as microplastics.  The researchers viewed these strong bonds as an opportunity rather than a problem.

The new technique actually recoups the high energy that holds these bonds together by catalytically converting polyethylene molecules into value-added commercial products.  The catalyst consists of platinum nanoparticles deposited onto perovskite nanocubes.  Under moderate pressure and temperature, the catalyst cleaves the carbon-carbon bonds in plastic to produce high-quality liquid hydrocarbons. 

The researchers believe these findings could lead to a future in which we can continue to benefit from plastic materials but do so in a way that is sustainable and less harmful to the environment.

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Turning plastic trash into treasure

Photo, posted August 15, 2012, courtesy of Emilian Robert Vicol via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Degraded Permafrost In The Arctic

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Permafrost is defined as rock or soil that has been at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years.  Most of it is located in high latitudes in and around the Arctic and Antarctic regions.   Permafrost covers nearly a quarter of the exposed land in the Northern Hemisphere.

Permafrost can contain many different materials including bedrock, sediment, organic matter, water and ice.  Because of the presence of organic matter, permafrost is potentially the source of significant methane emissions if it thaws and the trapped biomass begins to rot.

A recent study looked at the results of 30 years of aerial surveys and extensive ground mapping of an area of Canada’s high Arctic polar desert known as the Eureka Sound Lowlands.  This area has an extremely cold climate and the permafrost there is over 1/3 of a mile thick.  It has long been assumed that this landscape was stable.

Research led by McGill University in Montreal has found that this is not the case.  The increases in summer air temperatures seen in recent years are initiating widespread changes in the landscape.

A particular landform known as a retrogressive thaw slump that forms when ice within permafrost melts and the land slips down is widely occurring in the area.  The absence of vegetation and layers of organic soil in these polar deserts make permafrost in the area particularly vulnerable to increases in summer air temperatures.

The research indicates that despite the cold polar desert conditions that characterize much of the high Arctic, the interaction between ice-rich permafrost systems and climate factors is complex and the links between global warming and permafrost degradation are not well understood.

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Widespread permafrost degradation seen in high Arctic terrain

Photo, posted August 11, 2018, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)